AFTERWORD

Abstract

The Afterword traces briefly the connections between the post-Reformation story told in the preceding chapters and the better-known nineteenth-century reforms to divorce law and coverture. The civil death upon which parliamentary divorces and coverture were premised continued, and if anything legal patriarchy tightened, in the years between 1700 and the divorce and property law reforms of the 1800s. Drawing upon eighteenth-century work by Sarah Chapone and William Blackstone, the Afterword then turns to the writings of Caroline Norton to help sketch the changes that helped propel the Divorce Act of 1857. It briefly alludes to the links between the history examined in the book and continuing inequalities within marriages and related legally-regulated conjugal partnerships even today.